Lifeguard On Duty

          The Psalmist pondered this question in the eighth Psalm...."What is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You have given him dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under his feet.....O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!"
          If I have learned anything about man in the thirty-five years of my Christian walk it is the intellectual frailty of man. Not in technology and the various professions and crafts for man's abilities only amaze, but in common sense and logic is where our weakness is, and even here it can be great and honor God at times, but when it is absent all hell breaks loose.....and that is where we are today!
          I was a blue collar middle class union member my whole adult life and there is nothing that I desired that I could not have. I couldn't buy a Maserati...but I didn't desire a Maserati. I don't live in a mansion overlooking the sea but I'm very happy in my home in our little town. I have been blessed so much that I weep at God's mercy upon one who deserves none of it.
          How is it possible that God is not in our minds every hour of the day? How is it that we cannot see Him in the majesty of the sea, the grandeur of a fertile valley, the beauty of a flower and the wonder of a bird? How can we even stand erect in His presence without the aid of an angel? And how can we focus on the mundane necessities of life when His glory is everywhere? The answer is in our frailty which encompasses too much to adequately describe in a post such as this.
          I write this to the reader who might somehow apply the word 'fanatical' to many of my Christian posts. On the contrary, whatever this rapt attention to God, you must go out and get! You must see what drives a Billy Graham or an R. C. Sproul! You must read the life of a Luther or a Spurgeon! You must read His Word with His Spirit forming your thoughts! You must do this before you take your last breath of which you have absolutely no idea when that will be.
         The Christian who is not deemed to be fanatical by those who do not know Christ is in need. The happiness the world provides is not only temporal and fleeting but a poor substitute for what God offers. I'm writing this overlooking the sea, and directly overlooking a kiddie pool with contraptions that toddlers have fun in. One such contraption is a post with a bucket that is constantly being filled with a stream of water. Every minute and a half the bucket is full and then being top-heavy turns over and spills the water near or on the toddler to his glee. This is part of the Christian faith and the Christian life. The bucket is always being filled with the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Tipping it over is hopefully pouring it on others.
           There is a lifeguard directly in front on me watching over everyone, and a yellow flag is perched next to him on the stand signifying calm but care is to be taken anyway. The surf is gentle right now but six hours from now he will put a black flag in the post that warns of dangerous currents as the tide is low and the waves are huge. This also is the Christian life. God's Word is the flag and right now in America it is blood red. A storm is approaching...or a tsunami...either way we have to be on full alert. I've lived sixty-seven years and have never seen this flag.
           Friends, take joy in Christ if you truly know Him. Revel in His glory, prostrate yourself before His holiness, and stand with His sword at your side at times such as are quickly approaching.

How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count The Ways. Well....Give Me A Week To Think About It.

        My wife and I attended a beautiful wedding yesterday, beautiful in many ways but the most of which was the centrality of Jesus Christ... from the pastor's message, to the absence of a few very modern and secular traditions that we don't think twice about in America today, to re-emphasis on Jesus Christ in the speeches at the reception.
        I'm listening to Breitbart radio's Saturday show as I type and the host, one of the best we have on conservative radio, is in this case celebrating President Trump's decision to put off until next week his final decision on signing on to the Marxist and globalist inspired Paris Climate Agreement at the G-7.
        Now the post that follows that I titled Miranda Rights which was written a few weeks ago uses an analogy of marriage as it pertains to Donald Trump but I'll add another right here in this preface. President Trump's hesitation to have months ago officially rejected the Paris Climate Agreement is analogous to this.....A man gives his sacred vows to his bride in their wedding but a few short months later a beautiful seductress makes it known that she wants to take the man away from his new wife. What does he do? He thinks it over and says....no...not right now....give me another week to make my decision.....and the new bride is supposed to celebrate how faithful he is.

Miranda Rights

        Miranda and Cosmo marry in the city's biggest high society event of the year. Miranda had an inheritance while Cosmo had the Hollywood looks. Family members of both took bets on how long the marriage would last because everyone knew who Cosmo was, but there was no dissuading Miranda, for she thought the world of him. They honeymooned in outer space courtesy of Elon Musk.
        Back in their new home, the matrimonial bliss lasted only a few months before the arguments started. "They were right".....thought Miranda....everyone....in their warnings that Cosmo was a bore, an egotist and not a nice man. Cosmo got what he wanted out of the deal and Miranda was humiliated, but the marriage essentially ended the night that while in the midst of an argument Cosmo put a finger in Miranda's face and yelled...."I only married you for your money....I never loved you....Go ahead and divorce me....I'll fight you for every penny.'
         Folks this is a microcosm of what happened in the last election. We had what Donald Trump wanted while Trump courted us as a king would his future queen to get an heir. The defining moment when the marriage essentially ended between Donald Trump and true conservatives came in his tweet threatening the Freedom Caucus after the Obamacare Establishment scam went down.
          Friends....and if you truly love America then you are friends....at least in my eyes. You could put him back on his pedestal if you want....but you will someday wind up as a battered spouse. The only reason that Donald Trump is not this day building another tower somewhere or working on a television show is because of conservatives like those on the Freedom Caucus.....and us....and probably you. This has been a long battle.....and yet newcomer to the family Donald Trump tweets....during the honeymoon....

"The Freedom Caucus will hurt the entire Republican agenda if they don't get on the team,  & fast....We must fight them, & Dems, in 2018!"

         Let me interpret this inane tweet for you...."I only married you for your money...."I never loved you....Go ahead and divorce me....I'll fight you for every penny." Now if you want, you can accept Cosmo's roses and candy and a card with a poem inside that reads....

      "My sweet Babboo....we must make up, & fast....
             or Obamacare will stay and tax reform will....will...I can't think of anything that rhymes with
             fast, but it will be really really bad."

  But the next card you receive will probably read.....

       "Pursuant to the provisions in the Republican Party platform URSCRWD 2017, you are hereby given an eviction notice to vacate the Oval Office, the NSC, all those congressional chair thingamajigs and the White House Press Briefing Room."

Note: your Miranda Rights....You have the right to remain silent....anything you say can and will be used against you...for these people do not fight fair. You have a right to an attorney....a mediator....you cannot pay him....unlike Cosmo he will never leave you or forsake you.....His name is Jesus Christ!

Memorial Day

The following, poorly structured though it may be, is an attempt at poetry which I like to re-publish every Memorial Day. It is a distant and quick reflection of my first two and a half years in the army which began in September of 1969.

B. D.

Good-byes outside the Federal Building, hearts bursting with pride,
new friends, for a day or two anyway.
Where you from?
Meal tickets, cough, sign here, raise your hand, get on the bus,
a few hours to digest what happened.
Here's your bunk, here's your hat. It won't be too small tomorrow.
Lights out...lights on, get up.
Raise your left hand. The foot below that is your left foot.
Milk never tasted so good, nor liver.
Smoke'm if you got em.
Lights out, shut up. Lights on, get up.
"Hey new guy!" Eight weeks is a lot of seniority here.
March, run, push, carry, salute, stomach in, chest out.
Congratulations, pride, get on the bus.
Seven to three and turn the lights out when you want.
Boston ain't bad but a bald head would be normal today.
Home for the weekend, cab driver not impressed.
Here's your test, here's your test, here's your test.
Congratulations, another stripe, get on the bus.
Farewell party, pack light, good-bye.
White building, no windows, no news, no TV, just wait for your name, it could be a couple days.
Get on the plane.
Heat, aroma, concertina wire, dust, sun, water buffalo, silk, Pabst Blue Ribbon,
reel-to reel, abacus, burn detail, pretty Asian girls, 12 hour days...forever,
pills, mail call, piasters, conical hats, nouc mam, Mama San, number 10, dinky dow, tuk tuks,
maps, files, briefings, frequencies, "They're on the move," sleep, maps, files.
Whistle!
Bunkers, jokes, heat, siren.
Sand bags, guard duty, Asian Elvis, Buddha, kids, chocolate, Budweiser.
Whistle,
bunkers, no jokes, heat, siren.
Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, Fourth of July.
Sydney, Kings Cross, moneys gone, get on the plane.
Monsoons,
maps, files, briefings, frequencies.
Whistle,
bunkers, slop, siren.
Short-time calender, "I hear they don't like us?" Protests, daydreams, maybe college.

Whistle
I remember you.

Butterflies Are Free

         Here's the tweet...."Honor of a lifetime to meet His Holiness Pope Francis. I leave the Vatican more determined than ever to pursue PEACE in our world." It's a typical President Trump tweet...inane. The two met in private and we do not know what was said in private but whatever it was conservatives would not want to hear it, for President Trump is abandoning almost on a daily basis the very people who took him off the cover of tabloids to the pages of academic journals and think tank white papers....and from addressing corporate television brass to a NATO summit.
         Why do I write this? If you haven't figured it out by now....you will....eventually. President Donald Trump's mind has no borders. There is no structure to it. Candidate Trump was as a caterpillar....consuming solid food....but he has since turned into a butterfly.....leaving the solid plant food to draw liquid as from a straw from any source he can alight upon.....free to partake of the nectar of a beautiful flower or the liquids of rotting fruit or even a fetid swamp.
         Jorge Mario Borgolio, now Pope Francis I, is a lifelong Leftist. This is why he hammers away at such things as the ruse of man-made global warming. I could see the president's comment being legitimate had a Mr. Trump met with Pope John Paul II who along with President Ronald Reagan were instrumental in the demise of the Soviet Union...not Communism... for Communism is alive and well...existing in it's new post-caterpillar stage in the likes of the Monarch Obama.
         As customary, the two men exchanged gifts. President Trump presented Pope Francis with a set of first edition books by Martin Luther King Jr.; did Pope Francis wince for a moment when he read the first two words....Martin Luther?  The president was given a medal signifying peace.

        The following post from September of 2015. It's important to understand who the Jesuits are today, how and why Pope John Paul II opposed them, and what the implications are of a Jesuit pope.

The God Of Marxism

          The Society of Jesus.....The Jesuits.....whose beginnings go back to 1535 with Inigo Lopez de Onaz y Loyola...or...Ignatius of Loyola........and who were from those beginnings sworn defenders of the Papacy.......these same Jesuits eventually became the chief opponents and antagonists of the Roman Catholic Pope. How did this happen? In the last 45 years one pope died after only a month in office, two pontiffs unsuccessfully fought the Jesuits tooth and nail and yet another traditionalist became the first pope in 500 years to resign from the office. His successor....the first Jesuit Pope!
          Malachi Martin was a Jesuit and a Vatican insider. He was an author of numerous books that I'm not going to describe here because this topic is enough for one post. These books were best sellers and can easily be ordered but the one that you might want to start with is The Jesuits, The Society of Jesus and the Betrayal of the Roman Catholic Church. You may have to work a little to get a copy but it can be done.
         The Jesuits is not an anti-Catholic book, for this battle is within the Roman Catholic church. Traditional Roman Catholicism shares many fundamental beliefs with orthodox Protestantism, and differs on many many other doctrines essential to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Orthodox Protestantism  shares very little with the Jesuits. There may have been a commonality in the concern for the poor of this earth but the Jesuits are now more Marxist than Christian and Malachi Martin filled more than half of his book of over 500 pages giving evidence of this.
         The United States went from Ronald Reagan to the Marxist Barack Obama in 20 years! The Roman Catholic church went from the virulently anti-communist John Paul II to the Jesuit Pope Francis in 8 years! Have you not noticed the various statements that Pope Francis has made in this short two year period that seem to challenge what even the traditional Roman Catholic church has always believed and taught? I have! I was raised Roman Catholic with twelve years of Catholic education and if I were still Catholic today I would hope that I would be raising objections wherever I could.
         Martin lays out the contemporary scene for you in the first chapter titled The War. It begins with this statement..."A state of war exists between the papacy and the Religious Order of the Jesuits-the Society of Jesus, to give the Order its official name." He writes that the Jesuits are now..."enshrined in a totally new theology- the 'Theology of Liberation'..." He quotes John Paul II when upon meeting an "Indian Jesuit who, when he found was not a Marxist, exclaimed in surprise, 'So you're not all Marxists!'." Martin described the basis of this war thusly..."Marriage, homosexuality, business ethics, human liberty, piety, every sphere of human existence, were to be set adrift on the ever-changing tides of redefinition (of the Catholic Church.)"
         This book was written in 1987 during the papacy of John Paul II and before the fall of the Berlin Wall and the USSR. Jorge Mario Bergoglio, now Pope Francis I, was a seminary professor in Argentina at the time that Martin wrote his book. The more that he speaks out as Pope, the more questions arise as to who he is and what he believes.
         Malachi Martin writes..."Inigo founded his 'Company of Jesus' as he originally called it, for one purpose; to be defender of the Church and the papacy." This is the essence of his book, that the Jesuits have been transformed in the last 100 years from defenders of the Catholic Church and the Pope to defenders of Liberation Theology and Marxism. How similar this transformation is to Barack Obama and the United States of America and its Constitution!
         Martin gives the reader an in-depth history of the Jesuits and of their relationship with popes throughout the years. We see when and how the transformation took place with biographic descriptions of the General Secretaries of the Society. I was Roman Catholic when Pope John XXIII brought together Vatican Council II, when Pope Paul VI rather weakly took up the challenge to the Jesuit transformation, when Pope John Paul I died after only one month in the office and when the staunchly anti-communist Pope John Paul II entered the 'war.' I was oblivious to all of this.
         There will be no more books from Malachi Martin for he died from a fall down steps in his home in 1999 while in a wheel chair just after his 78 birthday. He had a private audience with Pope John Paul II before his death. You can read on the Internet both a defense of and opposition to this man. One can only wonder what Malachi Martin would write today of Pope Francis I.
         Communism and Marxism are referenced on 54 pages of Malachi Martin's book. Not a week and often not a day goes by without news stories about the Chinese Communist government's intrusions into the sovereignty of their neighbors, in the lives of their people and of their military buildup, or North Korea's threats and weapons sales to America's enemies. Cuba waited us out and Vietnam's Communist leader recently visited the Oval Office. Communism is alive and Marxism is the cat's meow to many who falsely believe them to be compassionate systems.

America Expiring

          Every part of society is responsible in some way for the imminent collapse of our nation, and I bear more than my share of blame, for over the course of my lifetime.....I helped construct what we have today.  God's judgements are sure on nations like ours that benefited from the blessings only to later reject the benefactor. Our society is in effect one giant 'planned parenthood' that cared more for itself and temporal blessings than eternal and spiritual blessings for its children.
          We never even attempted to learn to fly by the instruments that God gave us. We have lost sight of the horizon and have been flying in a thick fog for quite some time. Confused, we are unaware that we are now flying upside down.  The following post is from October of 2011:

America Expiring

          Tomorrow morning, throughout much of America and possibly even most of it's churches, ordained ministers will either climb into pulpits or stand behind lecterns to lead congregations in "worship" services. The original Hebrew and Greek will be deployed in some as well as pastoral helps of various kinds but mostly it will be a Christian variation of Oprah presented to the worshippers. Expensive sound systems will enliven the atmosphere and the results of lessens in elocution will be on display. The name of Jesus will be heard a few to a number of times, mostly as part of the message where the congregation can apply WWJD to their own life. Songs will be sung and either the choir or soloists will be given polite applause. It may be "pot luck" Sunday where little if any of the Christian faith will be discussed at the meal and after the services each person will shake the hands of the minister before they leave the church building, dutifully fulfilling the "rite of worship" and leaving them free to enjoy the football game or gather with family, confident that God's generous blessings of such activities has been earned for at least another week.

Meanwhile, the nation gasps for breath, wounded and bleeding, while wolves slowly pace back and forth looking for the right moment of total defenselessness to move in on their prey.

          When a church has grown through invitations such as or similar to these: "A friendly, loving congregation" or "Come grow with us" the ensuing sermons must therefore fit the invitation or charges of "bait and switch" will follow and the sanctuary will need a swinging door. Neither these ministers, nor their congregations, know the folly they are engaged in for they either have nothing to compare it to or their one experience with a church that actually preached Christ crucified showed them exactly where they do not want to be.
          As de Tocqueville strongly implied, the strength of America was in it's pulpits and conversely today our weakness emanates from there too. God has given us foolish leaders; He is purposely allowing our defenses to decay and our prosperity to whither. He is giving us what we want and may not let us see that it was "fool's gold" that we mined until it is too late. Our one hope is in Him extending mercy to us one more time but imagine that as a Republican platform!
          There indeed was a great fish that swallowed a man only to vomit him alive on a shore, and that man went on to give a warning to Nineveh, the America of it's day. That nation heeded the warning but years later another man was sent to Nineveh and this time not with a warning but a proclamation of impending judgment. Our prayer today, in America, should be "God let us hear from Jonah and not Nahum but if it be Nahum, give us strength to go on."
          There are many warnings given today that a Trojan Horse has come into the church but others think that those who spend their time giving warnings are to be pitied for they miss the blessings that God is so desirous to give. My response to this is that the real blessing is knowing the extent of His mercies to us and the real pity is in the Christian church that adamantly refuses to even consider that it may be a Laodicean church. It was that word "Laodicean" that a young American of Indian descent, Kavya Shivashankar, won the National Spelling Bee with in May of 2009. The definition she was given was "lukewarm or indifferent in religion or politics." Sit back and be satisfied with the state of the church and the church of state if you want but if you truly listen, there is a crescendo in a dirge rising over this land that we once loved, once protected and once attributed to the blessings of Almighty God.

God Has Blessed Israel....Not In Strengthening Them....But In Gathering Them!

          On June the 7th 1967, an Israeli paratroop brigade captured the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. There is a documentary/movie just released depicting that battle. I saw that film tonight, appropriately titled The Battle For Jerusalem, in a one night only showing that was in select theaters across America.
          At 6 p.m (EST) on May14th, 1948 the British mandate over Palestine expired and eleven minutes later President Harry Truman directed, over strong internal opposition, that the United States officially recognize the new state which would be later be called Israel. We are nearing the 70th anniversary of that date. We are also coming up on the 50th anniversary of the day that Israel took control of the old city of Jerusalem, vowing never to give it up again. I was seventeen years old during that which came to be known as the Six Day War.
          It has been nearly 2000 years since the vast majority of Jews rejected the very Messiah that they had been waiting for. God then let them go their own way and their house was left desolate. There will be no lasting peace in Jerusalem until Jesus descends on the Mount of Olives in the same way that He ascended. What we are doing now is merely attempting to hold off wars until they can no longer be held off. Neither nation....America or Israel....has God's protective hand upon it today.... for both nations are in full rebellion to Him. If we miss this....which unfortunately we have....we go forward in merely our own strength.
          The film that I mentioned at the beginning of this post showed God's miraculous dealings with a new nation.....and a people that He has not completely forsaken.....a people whom He will cause to call out to Him in their most difficult hour. God's people today....the redeemed.... are those of any background....both Jew and Gentile.... that have come to a saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ.
           Moses related these words that God had given to Abraham...."...I will bless those who bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee..." Has this not proven out many times? America had blessed Israel simply in that it treated Israel fairly. Under Barack Obama we in essence cursed Israel. We pretended to be their friend while greatly enabling their enemies.
           The Battle For Jerusalem portrayed very accurately God's faithfulness....not at all in that Israel is the economic and military power that it is today....but in that He gathered again as He said that He would....those who once looked to the coming of their Messiah but rejected Him whom they looked for....and will make known to them this their Messiah upon His return! We cannot know in detail what will happen in the days just ahead.... but we are confident of and rejoice in the end of all things.....and for this all praise is to be given to this merciful Savior.... faithful and blessed Mediator... and coming King!

Summer Reading

        The following post is from 2015. My habit for decades has been, while on vacation at the beach or at a pool, to set a Christian book in plain sight next to me simply in an attempt to generate conversation and maybe meet someone new. My most interesting experience with this happened many years ago at Hilton Head, South Carolina. I had set a book next to me that I had just finished that was a Bible study for Christian women, and it was from a Reformed Theology perspective!
         To make a long story short...a man passed by me laying at the pool and noticed the book. He, a prominent pastor in South Carolina, stopped to talk about it. The pastor asked to borrow the book to show to his wife who might be interested in it. It turns out that she was interested in using it in her Bible study. The following book.....Takedown.....is just laying on the pool deck next to me.... hopefully for some to notice!
 

Evil Days

         Paul Kengor is on a mission for he is exposing Communism and Marxism in America more than anyone else on the national scene. I previously his reviewed his book Dupes: How America's Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives For A Century. Well, he's done it again in his latest Takedown: From Communists To Progressives, How the Left Has Sabotaged Family and Marriage. What words can I use to encourage you to read this? I was glad to see that it came out in paper rather than hardcover for as a book purchaser myself I know that when you buy so many it's a lot easier to grab that paperback and head to the checkout counter.
         The cover has a wedding cake on it that is cut in two and separated with the groom on one piece and the bride on the other; the implication of course that marriage is being destroyed. The knife  that cut that cake is in the shape of the communist symbol of the sickle! The same-sex marriage agenda is indeed the topic within but time and again the author had to remind his readers of it for Communism and Progressivism are dissected throughout....for these lead up to the literal upheaval in the thinking of Americans on this issue that has taken place in little more than a decade.
         This post will be short. It's not a book review for that will not suffice. You need to read read this entire book, for we have a tendency to read but a little on this or that and somehow satisfy the angst within us on a decaying culture. Friends... this is not politics, nor is this the future, for we are already undone as a nation!
         Paul Kengor points out on a number of occasions that Communism has evolved on this issue whereas it formally opposed the homosexual life style but now, as he writes ...."Marx's and Engels's economic-based communism (has been redirected) to cultural adaptations, from income/class equality to sexual adaptations." He places the Democrat Party right there in the same metamorphosis .... "The entire Democratic Party and both Bill and Hillary Clinton were on board for the Defense of Marriage Act just a decade or two ago." He delves once again into Barack Obama's mentor Frank Marshall Davis. We visit the SDS community of the 60s, Margaret Mead, Margaret Sanger, Herbert Marcuse and many more who were the rage of the college campus back then.
         Kengor's writing is explicit when it has to be. You will put the book down at times to catch your breath. You may very well even stop to utter the prayer.....'God help us.' These are not merely 'difficult times' that we live in, nor are they ...'the times that try men's souls' as Thomas Paine, an atheist, penned. They are 'evil days' as the Apostle Paul wrote about in the book of Ephesians. We are living in....tribulation....and may even be entering what the Bible calls....'the' Tribulation.
         The book is 206 pages and fully footnoted. If you are a Christian anywhere near my age (65) you may very well remember Christian books that came out in early 1980s on Secular Humanism. If so it would surprise me if reading them did not focus the direction of your thinking and motivate you at the time. This book by Paul Kengor will do the same. It will leave no reader in doubt as to what has happened to us and what we are up against....the effort to, as the back cover describes... "take down the natural, traditional biblical family and attack religion in the process."
        

Our Stricken Ship

         I have a few peripheral fascinations in life and one of them would be the Titanic. I never saw the James Cameron film. Oh I did pay for a ticket and sit in one of the comfortable seats with every intention of watching the movie but I walked out about a half hour into the film. I watched the 1958 black and white version A Night To Remember when I was a child.....and I watched it again for the umpteenth time last night.
         With a little research I came up with this quote from the main female character in the Cameron film..."...there was a man named Jack Dawson and that he saved me...in every way that a person can be saved." It reminded me of a real life quote from the sinking of the Titanic. I've written about this before. John Harper was a British Baptist pastor and passenger on the Titanic. He was headed to America as a guest preacher and possibly to accept a call at a famous American church. He was travelling with his six year old daughter for he was a widower. After he placed his daughter in a lifeboat it is reported that he shouted "women, children, and the unsaved into the lifeboats."
         It is also reported that as he swam up to other people, and as hypothermia was setting is, he challenged them with the gospel of Jesus Christ. There was a meeting of survivors in Ontario, Canada a few years after the disaster. One man stood up and testified how John Harper swam up to him twice as he was holding on to debris and said "believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved." John Harper with no life vest for he had given it to another sank to his death. The man giving this testimony was rescued by a returning lifeboat. He told the gathering this..."I am the last convert of John Harper." Yes, I walked out of Cameron's film and will never view it.
         I believe that the sinking of the Titanic was a message to Britain and to America. Everyone thought that the great ship was unsinkable. Two world wars followed. The space shuttle Challenger had a multi-cultural crew...male and female...scientist, military and civilian...Caucasian, Asian, African-American...Christian, Jewish and Buddhist. Those iconic pictures of the breakup of the Challenger are still hard to look at.
         We don't seem to learn from disasters but we do sometimes learn when we are in them and this world has disasters ahead of it. May the church include preparation in its everyday duties and be encouraged with the same words that Paul gave those on his stricken ship... only as they point to eternal life...."Yet now I urge you to take heart, for there will be no loss of life among you, but only of the ship."

What This Country Needs Is....

The following post is only a few weeks old:

         We have a president in dire need of wisdom. Not the wisdom of Goldman Sachs for of that kind of wisdom Solomon wrote..."For all can see that wise men die; the foolish and the senseless perish alike, and leave their wealth to others." The wisdom that we all need and that this president needs is based on the "Fear of the LORD."
         Wisdom would have built a wall to keep the establishment hangers-on out of the Oval Office. Wisdom would have fired James Comey on the first day of the new administration, and wisdom would throw away whatever device President Trump tweets on. Wisdom wouldn't have done away with the White House visitor log. Wisdom would have barred Ivanka and Jared from the Oval Office. Wisdom would have scrapped Obamacare and given a clean slate to any replacement healthcare...and wisdom would have scarfed up on Jim DeMint before he had a chance to clean out his Heritage Foundation desk. I could go on but it gets much more serious than all of this.
       . North Korea demands more wisdom that JFK needed in the Cuban Missile Crisis. It's almost surreal to watch this play out in the news. Every American's eyes should be focused on this situation. Every pulpit should be pleading wisdom for this president. There are no more cooling off periods, for every minute that North Korea has from now on and probably every penny they have left will be used to get that nuclear device closer to American shores.
         President Trump is aware of this I'm sure. What is particularly saddening, even heartbreaking, is our media that wants his back against the wall while he deals with North Korea, the Democrats who want to find a way to bring impeachment proceedings...some whom couldn't find North Korea on a map... while their own country faces a wolf pack of enemies who are pacing in the shadows just outside our tents, and other Republicans who would cut off their nose to spite their face trying to get back at this outsider who humiliated them in the primaries and general election.
         We all need wisdom for we have all fallen short. We were consumed by our own success. God's Word could not be more clear on this than in Proverbs 9:10..."The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom..." or maybe Psalm 111:10 expresses it better..."The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom..." Yes they are the same, for God felt it necessary to repeat the dictum, so it would behoove us to adhere to it.
 

Soap Opera, Within A Shakespearean Tragedy, In A Cabaret

       Drudge uses the word bloodsport to describe the media's constant harpooning of President Trump. There's is a world of difference between legitimate criticism and killing just for the ivory tusk. I've given a fair amount of thought over the years on the various professions that have given up the ghost as to any life whatsoever as to their calling...and the subsequent collapse of America because of it. I'll only mention one in this post.
        Concerning them...remaining true to their responsibilities is absolutely vital in a constitutional republic such as we used to have. There's a remarkable scene from Ted Turner's classic movie Gettysburg where General Lee has no idea what's going on in and around what would become the Gettysburg battlefield in front of him. Calvary General Jeb Stuart either failed to send information on the Union army whereabouts or he did send information but it never arrived. Either way the Confederate General Lee was blind....was there an entire Union army right in front of him or only a portion of it? He was forced to act on the former and the battle was lost because of it.
        Now there is great debate over whether the American public today even cares about truth. Certainly some do and certainly some, if not most, do not, and the result of such an overall lack of information is that we as a nation are blind as to what is in front of us and even in our midst, and are not only essentially now an uninformed citizenry but purposely lied to by what is supposed to be a functioning free press whose purpose is to keep the citizenry healthily informed. Our media is a disgrace not only to journalism but to any remote concept of patriotism that they may harbor in their calcified hearts and atrophied minds. They let us down...each and every American...and all of our beloved children and families.....by not doing the job they volunteered for.
        Writing on this disaster of a news media in a short post is like trying to describe the Second World War in a few paragraphs....this because the failures and outright treasonous political schemes are so many. I'm going to reiterate here what I wrote of in my last post because it is so important.....if you do not at least read Drudge and Breitbart then you are essentially living in a news blackout, for you will essentially get no information from this cavernously hollow mainstream media.     
        Just one peripheral comment on their lunacy....Barack Obama legitimately should have had impeachment proceedings against him numerous times over most of his two terms but the media praised him throughout every lie. Now the media and many Democrats say that President Trump should be impeached. This is a smokescreen meant to coerce Donald Trump back to the globalist agenda where he spent his former life. What we are experiencing is a soap opera, within a Shakespearean tragedy, in a Cabaret.
          This president of ours is in dire need of strong, direct and restorative criticism! He's going to need functioning grey cells, a fully attentive mind and quick reflexes in the dangerous days ahead...but this media is as far as east is to west in understanding the seriousness of our situation. President Trump's first mistake was a big one in not bringing in sound conservative advisors everywhere. He's paying dearly for that mistake now.

To Stand Alone If Necessary

          The Western mind has been slowly covered by a glacier of doubt about anything but it's own intellectual and physical virility. In such a situation you either freeze to death while admiring your image in the ice or find warmth enough to survive. Many of our churches froze to death while others are suffering from hypothermia. The congregations that are 'clothed in scarlet' huddle together in fellowship, hearing the Word of God preached and doing their best to bring others in from the cold. The following post is about five weeks old:

To Stand Alone If Necessary

          I have not only enjoyed but have been thoroughly edified by every word that I have ever read by Iain Murray...and I've read quite a few of his books...and that statement remains intact after finishing his latest....J. C. Ryle, Prepared To Stand Alone.
         Great Britain was blessed by two great preachers in the last half of the 19th century. The word 'blessed' may not do justice to what their ministries did for Great Britain during that period, and all of Christianity, not only in the last half of the 20th century, but right up until today! Christianity in England was in the initial stages of collapse. The ministries of both of these men, and many others of course, not only kept the church afloat but provided an invaluable warning and prophesy of total collapse that should speak to us today....for that collapse did indeed occur. The sermons and the writings of both men, thanks to the 'electric telegraph' as J. C. Ryle described it, enabled their work to compass the world.
          J. C. Ryle attended Eton, that famous boys boarding school that has produced 19 British Prime Ministers. You may have heard the phrase...'the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton.' There is some doubt as to the veracity of this statement but J. C. Ryle's education gives support to it as his experiences at Eton produced a man who later became uncompromising on the gospel of Jesus Christ....wise....and tolerant when appropriate....but uncompromising on the essentials of the faith which are many.
          Ryle after Eton matriculated to Oxford where he excelled and would probably have moved on to a service life in Parliament had not he visited a church on a Lord's Day morning where a Bible passage stirred something in him that would agitate until a Christian and hero of the Christian Faith was born. That passage was the second chapter of Ephesians which includes...'By grace are ye saved-through faith-and that not of yourselves-it is the gift of God." It's interesting in that the other great preacher in England, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, had a similar experience of conversion where a disjointed unconventional service in a strange church did produce but a single verse of Scripture that would change a young man's life from the moribund to the extraordinary.
          J. C. Ryle was raised in a family that he described in this way..."My father's house was respectable, and well-conducted, but there really was not a bit of religion in it." He continued..." The plain truth is, that for the first 16 or 17 years of my life, there was no ministry of the gospel at the churches we attended....we had no real religious friends or relatives and no real Christian ever visited our house" and "for about the first 18 years of my life, neither at home, nor at school, nor college, nor among my relatives or friends, had I anything to do good to my soul, or to teach me anything about Jesus Christ." This in spite of the fact that his family did attend church and actually give occasional homage to God in their home.....so similar to America today.
          J. C. Rule became a minister more out of financial necessity than anything else, and his father wasn't happy with his decision...."the consequences of this change were very great indeed...it caused great uncomfortableness in my own family, and made my own position very unpleasant indeed. In fact no one can tell what I had to go through, in hundreds of petty ways....It made an awkwardness, and uncomfortableness, and an insensible kind of estrangement which no one can comprehend but those who have gone through it. I had the constant uncomfortable feeling that on account of my religious opinions I was only a tolerated person in my own family and somewhat alienated and estranged from all my old friendships among my relatives."
          It should be noted that these words come from a rather informal autobiography that he wrote primarily for his children. Other than this book J. C. Ryle was not into exalting himself in any way. He experienced many sorrows. His father lost all of his money, necessitating the young man quickly choose employment.... he sacrificed to help his father with his debts....his first wife died young and his second of three spouses died after ten difficult years of illness. Although he doesn't mention it as such, the greatest disappointment may have come after decades of ministry, when as the church was collapsing into much doctrinal error, this stalwart of the faith was criticized ridiculed and isolated for his persevering proclamation of the true gospel of Jesus Christ. He was not a preacher at a small church at the time but the Bishop of Liverpool in the Church of England! So the beginning and end of his ministry was similar to Charles Spurgeon's, for the great Baptist pastor was also isolated, censured and relegated as inconsequential in the modern church of his day.
          The American Christian of today would do well to pick up this book and read for we also may be called to 'stand alone' if necessary. Our church has gone modern, our gospel is diluted, and our nation is suffering as a consequence.
           J. C. Ryle, Prepared To Stand Alone by Iain Murray is much more than a biography. It is, just as every tract that Ryle wrote and sermon that he gave, an evangelical call to faith in Jesus Christ. A number of doctrinal issues are explored that pertain to us today, one of which is the relationship of church and state, and Bishop Ryle's opinion on this will definitely surprise and may even edify.
           If the reader here is a young person then this is a book you must read! If you are of middle-age it will strengthen your resolve for the days ahead, and if you are really old like me...it will fortify that which hopefully you already know, that "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever."....that this life is short and in the words of a famous poem..."Only one life, will soon be past, Only what's done for Christ will last"....and that only reliance upon the words of the captain of our faith will guide us through the increasing storms and unseen shoals to our right and to our left.
      

Special Dog's Commencement Speech

I combined three past posts into the following as a commencement speech. If you attend your son's or daughter's commencement and are disappointed in the words and advice that they are given, please consider printing this post and giving it to them.

         Once again, another year has passed and I wasn't invited by anyone to be their commencement speaker! So I dreamed a dream and in that dream a very fantastical thing happened. Joe Biden was to be the commencement speaker at the University of Pennsylvania but a couple of his hair plugs fell out at the last minute and he refused to go on stage. The Ivy League school administrators were frantic in trying to find a replacement. When they heard my name, Special Dog, they thought I must be a rap singer and thus eminently qualified to give a commencement speech.......then I woke up. So I sat down and penned the speech that I would have given had I in fact been invited as a commencement speaker...anywhere!

          It was drizzling and a bit chilly as my wife and son and I walked Cambridge University back in the spring of 2001. I wanted to see where many of the Puritans were educated, and I wanted to see some of the places where scenes from the Academy Award winning Chariots Of Fire were filmed. The building that housed the White Horse Inn on the grounds of Cambridge was long gone but a small blue plaque hung in the nearest spot possible to that location. That inn was a 16th century English pub where students, Dons and travellers discussed the works of Martin Luther, and out of this discussion came a passion for the hearing of the Word of God which resulted in the English Reformation. Young people...find your own White Horse Inn!

             Let me begin with a little bit of American history....the "last official words" of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy. The magazine sized book published in 1964 that most everyone has seen... Four Days, The Historical Record Of The Death of President Kennedy, described it this way, "These were President Kennedy's last official words-the conclusion of the speech he was to have delivered in Dallas." That speech ended with these words, "...the righteousness of our cause must always underlie our strength. For as was written long ago: 'Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain'." That Bible excerpt is the last half of the 1st verse of Psalm 127... from the King James Version, which begins with this "Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it."
          So I pass these words on to you as encouragement in this commencement speech for they are the only truly reliable words that I will utter: Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it. Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain!

          So.... you will be going out trying to find a job...maybe you already have one lined up.....please remember...Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it.
          You finally have that degree....it will be worthless if you forget, Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.
          Whatever your degree is in.....your future must be built upon this, Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it.
          You might already have a position secured at the biggest law firm in New York City.....God's Word reminds you, Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain!
          You're already an expert at investing and have great plans for your portfolio.....is this the title of that portfolio...Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it?
          You're patient and willing to work your way up....good traits, but keep in mind...Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.
          You just might want to work for a year with the United Nations or some such organization.....to build peace.... Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it.
          You might want to save the planet or protect the environment .....without God it will be in vain, for Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain!  

         Surely somewhere in America on that bleak or snowy Saturday in early December 1941 a young man sat looking out of a restaurant window, or maybe a coffee shop, with a young lady at his side who was his new bride. They had the world at their fingertips as he was just awarded that treasured college diploma he worked so long and hard for, and she wore the wedding band she had dreamed about since they first met in grade school. They looked into each other's eyes with hardly a care in the world. Oh, the plans they had so much fun making.....a small cottage with a white picket fence that someday would keep little ones and maybe a puppy dog from straying as they play.
          And then the morning came and as they walked into church the somber faces took their joy away for they had not heard the news from that group of islands where the sun shown year round and warm surf slapped the white beaches. America was in the war against evil that they had only given themselves minutes a day to reflect upon. The young bride knew immediately that their dreams would now be put on hold if they would ever come true. Surely the prayers of all present in that worship service were salted with tears.
          Not every generation has its hopes interrupted as this generation did on December 7th, 1941 but your generation today may indeed be another one. Love is disappearing in the world....no.... worse than that... it has been hijacked by greed, tortured by pride and what is left is directed to ourselves, and we in America are paying dearly for our dalliances.

          The 1943 Academy Award for Best Picture went to the 1942 American film Mrs. Miniver in which Greer Garson also won for Best Actress. It portrays the upper middle class Miniver family who live outside of London in a very nice home on the River Thames.
          Life could not be sweeter for Mrs. Miniver and her family as she is smitten over an expensive new hat and her husband (Walter Pidgeon) outdoes her by purchasing a sporty new vehicle. Their eldest son has taken up the pipe at university and spouts his political views with heartfelt sincerity but naive certainty much like our youth today and very much like myself at that age. War looms on the horizon but is not taken seriously until England declares war on Germany. Life then changes for the family as their son goes off to war as their own home is damaged by bombs.
          There is a church scene at the beginning of the film and another at the end, and the stark contrast of the two scenes is the essence of the film, for in the first it seemed as if the congregation was thinking about anything but God, but at the end, with the blue sky visible through their bombed out church roof, the entire congregation sat in rapt attention to the words from the pulpit.
        
          It was in the 1960s when Madison Avenue realized that the youth of America were a potentially potent economic force with their newly established buying power. Along with all the attention given to us, for I was a Baby Boomer also, came a microphone. Some used it to shout pro-Ho Chi Minh slogans from atop university statues, some used it to attack Richard Nixon, some used it to announce to the world the true meaning of love, peace and happiness, and a very few used it to ask "Brother, are you saved
          When Barack Hussein Obama came along with no employment history to speak of, no legitimate letters of recommendation, no experience outside of community organizing and not even a birth certificate to prove eligibility for the job he was applying for, the youth came out in force to change America and the world. Barack Obama received 66 percent of the 18-29 vote in 2008.
          America needs a vigorous but positive contribution from its youth at this very moment in our history. It must not be birthed by the spirit of the age but by God's Holy Spirit. Just getting a job cannot be the criteria to determine success. The college student of today is in a more precarious situation than any generation before them. Not the Civil War, nor World War II, nor the Cuban Missile Crisis compares to it. They are losing their republican form of government, the Constitution that kept the rule of law intact, and most importantly the blessings of having God's very hand upon our nation.
          The original discovery that youth were an economic force has evolved into a monster feeding frenzy with the youth feeding on every material and social networking product thrown at them while others feed on the youth themselves, and enemies of America feed on the vacant minds seeking anything to occupy it.
          I realize that you do not want to hear this. Possibly you are not represented by this description. You have made plans, worked hard and now it is your turn to enter the work force and carve out a niche with a prosperous future. Are you going to attempt this without God, or at least expect the rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in a nation that overtly rejects God? Realize this.... past generations had the benefit of living within of a God-fearing populace. Even the agnostic could graze in the fields of plenty. This is not the case today! Others have long since sprayed the insecticide of secular humanism over the amber waves of grain, killing the grain it was supposed to protect. You can join this survival of the fittest if you want, where prosperity is soulless and void of true happiness; or you can join those who are seeking mercy from God and a renewed reverence to the one who blessed your grandparents and their parents as far back as to arrival on this continent.
          Do you sometimes feel a void of passion in your life...a meaninglessness that cannot be satisfied by the picture that you paint on your Facebook page? Well, a river of passion flows right by you! Cup your hands and drink from it. Let mercy and peace pass over your palate. A President's election will give but one night of elation but the coronation of the King of Kings provided every morning and every evening with a ceaseless ardor that will make you forever thankful. If you happen to really see the trouble that we are in here in America... that vision is from God, and He will also give the balm, supply the strength and provide the wisdom to see the joy of redemption even in the darkest hours of this world, and to plan ahead with the full trust that if it be His will it will happen and if it not be His will you would not want it to happen. Here is the only true hope and change...... "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation." 2 Corinthians 5:17

          One does not have to be a PHD, or a celebrity, a statesman, general or financial wizard to relay God's wisdom to graduates......

"Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it. Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain."

Bucket List

I'll leave the following up for a few hours and then transfer it over to my humor page...

        I'm about as far from a Harley rider as you can get but I've always had a bit of a fascination with others who ride down the road with the wind in their hair. We're in Myrtle Beach right now and it's Bike Week. It wasn't planned...in fact I usually try to avoid Bike Week but it slipped my mind when the reservations were made. Well... it's actually interesting seeing...and hearing....all these remarkable machines.
        The first night in town we stopped for dinner at a street café with a lot of men and women my age wearing Harley Davidson gear. The waiter came up and asked if I just came in on my Harley. I said...."Yeah!" My wife corrected me with...."You didn't just ride in on your Harley!" I thought he said..."Are you ready to order?" It was kinda neat being a Harley rider for about five seconds.
         I scratched one item off my bucket list tonight. As a latchkey kid I learned a lot about life from the movies...which means that I learned a lot that was a little bit off kilter, but a lot of my love for my country comes from westerns and frontier films, and World War II and little house on the prairie type movies. I learned about love and romance from that little box with black and white movies also...which probably explains a lot.
         One of those films was A Summer Place with Sandra Dee, Troy Donahue, Dorothy McGuire, Richard Egan and Arthur Kennedy. Fortunately I don't think that I was old enough to know what was really going on, but a beach scene with two young people in love...and that theme....that theme....stuck with me for a half a century. Well tonight as my wife and I walked along a South Carolina beach with a chill in the air I pulled out my iPhone, searched for and played a few times as we walked... keeping each other warm... the theme from A Summer Place. It was special.
         Let's see...what's next on the list....the Alamo....gotta go there some day!

Time Races Forward

 I had an interesting experience recently and took pains to describe it to my wife for it affected me so. I've recently been in contact with a friend from my youth. He has aged as have I and I've grown accustomed to seeing old friends with gray hair but this was something altogether different. I met his mother again for the first time in fifty years. This once very pretty women is now 93 years old. Are you with me on this for it's difficult to describe? My eyes saw a 43 year old women and the next time I saw her she was 93 years old. Outwardly I was as friendly as I could be but inwardly I was shaken. This wisp of life that is ours passed through my mind in a moment and I saw as never before Isaiah's words...'The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever." If we could but see our own mortality we might kneel before an eternal God to whom a day is as a thousand years and a thousand years as a day.
         God has given you time to seek Him. Do not let this day pass without contemplating how time races forward where He will soon tell you this as you stand before Him.  I wrote the following post almost eight years ago.

Have You Had A Taste?

          I'm an incurable pack rat. My wife came up to me yesterday with a gray disk, about the size of a silver dollar and wanted to know if I knew what it was. It was slightly beveled and had little holes throughout. I had no idea what it was and she was about to throw it away. What! Wait a second. If we throw this out, there will be a day, when I need a disk about the size of a silver dollar, slightly beveled with little holes throughout. She'll never learn. Just throw the thing out and don't ask me about it.
          I have in my hands, well actually I'm typing but I have here in front of me a book that I bought from the National Record Mart in the winter of 1973. Its title is Reach Out, The Living New Testament (illustrated.) It was published by Tyndale and I paid $2.95 for it. It has just a little bit of commentary in it and was aimed at young adults. I showed up at church services in Vietnam when in a solemn and introspective mood but the thought of church never entered my mind during my last 7 months at Fort Bragg. I started at Pitt in January of 1973. It was a heady time. I read constantly, occasionally even textbooks from classes that I was supposed to be reading. I would take my latest book into the college bar and my friends and I would discuss philosophy or some other subject that we were interested in, until I could no longer pronounce my words. That's when my genius really came out.
         I remember one night particularly well. We were discussing The Teachings of Don Juan by Carlos Castaneda. Here was a UCLA anthropology grad student taking lessons from a Yaqui Indian shaman on how peyote was instrumental to understanding the mysteries of life. We were absorbed in this while unaware that a couple of quarts of Budweiser did the same thing. In between this nonsense I would occasionally show up at St. Paul's Cathedral. It would be almost a decade before God opened my eyes and I could see the marvel of the gospel and the majesty of His Son, but I had a taste in 1973.
          Sometimes I open this book up and press the pages to my face, smelling them and imagining how that word Jesus would thrill me before I even understood. I'll read a few verses from this paraphrased translation, for it not a true translation, and be transported back for only a moment. And only a moment is what I would want for I was lost. I was in love with me and only the grace of God kept me from facing Him until a time when He would use the words of the Bible as a mirror where I would see only corruption. There are so many mysteries that will be explained to us when this life is done but none to me as impenetrable as why God opened my eyes. If you are firm in your decision to reject God, and you want a good excuse to bolster your case, just think of me. If God would redeem me, then there is no fairness in the world. And don't listen to the voice on the other shoulder that says If God would forgive me, then there is hope for you also. And whatever you do, don't open His book!

"...That Has Not Bowed To Baal"

          The 19th chapter of the 1st Book of Kings is both sobering and uplifting. I'm sure that you are familiar with it. Jezebel had just taken an oath to find and kill Elijah who in turn then fled into the wilderness. This is sobering because Jezebel's pledge of revenge is so similar to what is happening in America today. The prophets of the godless globalist establishment elites who have essentially over time destroyed that part of America's heritage that was good and righteous were themselves nearly obliterated in the primaries and general election of 2016 but they have come back with a vengeance, determined to once and for all eliminate this Christian influence that has caused them severe problems since Ronald Reagan's election in 1980.
          At times it's as if we also no longer seem to have the strength to row against the wind and tide, or to stand alone if necessary. God sat Elijah down for a conversation and instructions and it's fascinating to read. Elijah began lamenting that he was all alone. No one else was holding firm in opposing Israel's worship of the Baals. God then let Elijah know in no uncertain terms that He had reserved 7000 in Israel whose knee had not "bowed to Baal." Well, God surely has left a large remnant in America that have not bowed to Baal..... may He....should it be His will to have mercy upon us.... unleash them in our pulpits and in the public square.        

In Whom Do We Trust

         Ann Coulter may be the most courageous woman in American politics. She may be wrong on occasion but she has integrity that goes hand in hand with her courage. I wrote the following post last August after reading her then newest best-seller In Trump We Trust. It was a terrible choice of a title. I winced when I first heard of it and I hope that you winced also.
         It's interesting in that now that we know more about who Donald Trump really is that she refers to him as Emperor God. She didn't have to acknowledge her misjudgment of Donald Trump. She could spend her time inventing excuses for him as it seems most others are doing. A conservative radio talk show host tried to give a friendly jab by asking her if she had any 'In Trump We Trust' t-shirts left but she came right back at him with..."We'll have to change it to 'In Trumpism We Trust." This is honesty and integrity folks. Making excuses for Donald Trump is not. Ignoring what happened on that first Obamacare repeal bill is intellectual dishonesty.
         There are multiple verses throughout the Bible stating that our trust is in God and God alone! The following post only describes it's origin in America's heritage.

In Whom Do We Trust....August, 2016:

         The best thing about Ann Coulter's new book In Trump We Trust...E Pluribus Awesome! is that it is a small size hardback and only about 180 pages. This isn't a sarcastic remark. As a former bookstore owner, I know that on current affairs topics...the easier the read-the easier the sell...and I hope that people do take notice of the book...but for more than one reason.
          Ann Coulter is smart. She talks in a such a rapid-fire fashion that her books are easier to digest than her words in an interview. And she's funny, I mean if you were in a submerged submarine with no power and no hope to be saved....she would be able to make you laugh. The anecdotes and the facts that she gives in her many books are not necessarily new to us but her take on them is often profound. She takes these zingers and fires them like fast balls whose pop in the catcher's mitt gets the whole stadium's attention.
           No matter what issues have endeared Donald Trump to Americans over the course of this election, and there have been many, Coulter brings them back in a very concise fashion that refreshes the reader, if the reader even needs refreshed, on why they went hog-wild on Donald Trump to begin with. It's the type of book that makes you want to take notes, and reread them on a daily basis in preparation for conversation with liberals. I think that I may know why Ann Coulter has never married... she must spend all of her time categorizing and filing news stories, ridiculous quotes and absurd comments by both liberals and Republican elites.
        There, I've written a lot of nice things about Ann Coulter's In Trump We Trust. As election cycle political books go it's powerful, but I didn't purchase it to be reminded of why so many people liked what they were hearing from Donald Trump. I drove for 45 minutes to buy it and sat right down with a cup of HerbaGreen tea to read through it because I had to know if Ann Coulter had any idea how those four words of the title might resonate with anyone who knows the history and meaning of the phrase In God We Trust!
         The closest the author came to even touching on the concept of God came in three pages under the heading of Evangelical Voters? Simple! Just Ask President Huckabee. There are not many issues that Ann Coulter is clueless on but this is one of them. She is so conservative-Tea Party hip, so devastatingly today, and so passionately polemic, that she is deaf to God's thunderous warnings to a nation that seeks redemption from anyone but Him!
         This title, In Trump We Trust, may have been given the author just as were the spoken words given to Balaam's donkey in the Old Testament Book of Numbers, or maybe as the sudden summoning prowess to the Witch of Endor. Ann Coulter might as well buy the granite stone to be placed over America's heritage, a heritage she thinks that she is protecting, and order her book title etched in an arc across the top, for placing our trust in ourselves while forsaking the God of our beginnings and our multitudinous blessings is what brought us to where we today!
         Francis Scott Key gave America the phrase "And this be our motto: 'In God is our trust' " in the fourth stanza of his poem that would later be put to music and become our National Anthem.
        We'll have to wait and see if this paraphrasing becomes the single most alarming message in Ann Coulter's newest book. Will Christians see the ominous unintended inference? Will Pastors weep from the pulpits over what we have come to place our trust in, and will God have mercy upon us as He did with the repentant Ninevites upon the arrival of a foul-smelling, muck-stained, wide-eyed prophet?
       

Prognosis? You Don't Want To Know!

The following is a somewhat updated post is from April of 2014:

          At first I thought it had to be a hoax...iconic Soviet propaganda posters hanging on the kitchen area wall of the Press Secretary to the President of the United States of America. So I researched it and went to the Washingtonian Magazine to see the article myself. Barack Obama's Press Secretary Jay Carney and his family were indeed featured in an article accompanied by pictures of the family in their home, one of which was in their kitchen area and on the wall were two easily recognizable Soviet propaganda posters. Breitbart News did the research on those posters and one was a Soviet soldier asking "Have you enlisted" and the other was of a Russian woman factory worker and the caption reads "Women! Learn production, replace workers who went to the front. The stronger the hinterland-the stronger the front'."
         How could this happen? I'll tell you. Wisconsin Senator Joe McCarthy knew that communists had infiltrated our government but more importantly he knew how serious this was. He did his best to warn America, and for it he was pilloried. Today his name is used to smear others who try to warn America about communism. Americans, over the past fifty years, were not educated as to the evils of communism, so neither were they educated on the methods and strategies of communism. Mr. Carney worked as a Moscow correspondent for Time for three years and has studied Russian culture and history. Well I have an interest in Russian history also....that of a strong people with many great attributes.......a people dehumanized in the post-revolution days and in the gulags....and a people kept in darkness by a state media. Does that last part sound familiar? So how could Jay Carney miss what was symbolized on those posters? It's simple actually, for he was probably never taught what communism really was!
         This absurd hysteria over Donald Trump today by the same media that could care less when President Obama slyly told Dmitri Medvedev... on a hot mic... to tell Vladimir Putin to give him more time....this hysteria is communist DNA....as is the Soviet style speech censorship on many of our campuses....as is much of the violence in our cities....and as is so much more of the chaos that America is experiencing. To the media that at present has the freedom to display what can only be described as naive stupidity....enjoy it....for if the Left and/or a New World Order take over it will be the last freedom of speech that you will have.
 

Our Priorities Divide Us

           It was always the elephant if the room. We conservatives are divided amongst ourselves where one side, the side that I'm on, considers the most important issues to be those that effect the nucleus of the family and the fiber of America's make-up which is anchored by a faith and reverence in God, for without that no economic measures or American resurgence in the world will be of any value. The other side values most... economic growth... American power... and less government. We are the constitutional side where they are the nationalistic side. This isn't to say that they don't care about the Constitution for they do, and this isn't to say that we aren't nationalists for we are. The issues in themselves are not the main cause of this division but rather it's the priorities that we both hold to these issues.
          This division was extremely evident in the primaries whereas in the general election we were united. but a now President Trump is dividing us once again. You see, from our side, we had had enough of the lies and deception of the Republican establishment. We wanted...no we demanded honesty and integrity in our leaders. Without this there would be no change. The other side demanded action. They wanted changes.....they wanted to 'make America great again.'
          Well we didn't get honesty or integrity so we're the ones who are not happy. The other side got all kinds executive orders and new bills so they can still show up in force in a rally as they did Saturday in Harrisburg but they themselves must be wondering what's going on after this budget was passed and in what is almost surreal, the Republicans have the audacity to pull out the same old smoke and mirrors in their pitiful attempts to defend it. Right now the other side is blaming the Republicans in Congress but they can only beat this drum so long before they realize that Donald Trump isn't really with them either!
           President Trump lied to us on the Syria missile strike, he actually worked against us on the Obamacare fiasco, and he brought stark-raving mad progressives right into the Oval Office, and establishment hangers-on in the White House. He has no moral compass and few if any principles, but we on our side already knew that.
           The dangerous situation with North Korea doesn't change any of this because it is entirely separate from any president's political agenda. President Trump was handed this severe problem on a silver platter. Our differences within conservatism vanish on issues of the defense of America. The unfortunate reality is that if given more time North Korea will make progress with their technology including a hydrogen bomb, ballistic missile technologies, smaller bombs that long range missiles can carry and submarine capabilities. Added to this they can export their products to terrorist nations.
           President Trump and our military face a gargantuan task in ending this threat. This is where our argument comes into play again for we need wisdom and we need God's hand upon this emergency.
      

38th Parallel

         I was only 12 years old when the Cuban Missile Crisis took place in October of 1962 but I remember well the fuss, and since then there have been countless articles, a number of books and a few movies made on those thirteen days in October. That 'crisis' though...pales in comparison to the one that we now have with Communist North Korea.
         A book was published in 1970 titled Khrushchev Remembers, and I read it a few years after its publication for I was at Pitt at the time looking for anything to read other than the assigned books that I should have been reading. Supposedly the Former Soviet Premier dictated and then smuggled out of the USSR tapes which would become the book. The general reflection on Khrushchev Remembers is that it probably came from his dictated tapes but that in no ways insures that what he dictated was absolutely true or accurate. One thing that did stay with me from reading it was that Khrushchev was sane. We very well may not be dealing with a sane individual in North Korea.
         I was in conversation on this earlier tonight and the word 'unspeakable' was what came to mind...as to the potential loss of life.... so great that it should have a sobering effect on anyone seriously watching this situation develop. There should not be a pulpit in America this Lords' Day that does not lead the congregation in prayers of petition for wisdom for all those involved in this decision-making, mercy upon all of us who find ourselves in this situation and strength for our military that may be called upon to intervene in this godless, communist tyrant's wreaking havoc in the geopolitics around the 38th parallel on the Korean Peninsula and even the geopolitics of the Middle East as it passes through Iran.
        
      

Our President Is A Believer?

          Vice President Mike Pence also spoke in the Rose Garden on May 4th as President Trump signed an executive order turning back the clock on government intrusion in American Christian pulpits. I just happened to see a clip of the Vice President's remarks a few minutes ago. Did I just hear what I just heard? Please excuse my irregular phrasing but it was astonishing. Mike Pence smiled, and in his very gentle manner looked into the crowd of supporters and said this....."Our president is a believer.....he is a man of unshakable faith in God."
          Mr. Vice President, Donald Trump has been a profane and godless man...and he has proven this over and over again with his words in interviews. He's a disciple of Normal Vincent Peale's gospel and you see this just about every time he speaks. Everything is positive thinking....everything! So Mr. Vice President....please be more specific in this good news.....just when did Donald Trump become a believer? Did he say two sentences in assenting to some bare minimum invitation to the gospel...for that's a common methodology today in evangelizing.
           Folks, there are a lot of things that a new Christian needs time to develop but gratitude isn't one of them. By gratitude I mean that one first realizes with an overbearing grief that one has spent his life in rebellion to a holy God, and then after crying out for mercy and forgiveness offered at the cross of Calvary, and through faith in the shed blood of our Savior, there is an overwhelming gratitude and humility in knowing that one has been forgiven....enough anyway that one doesn't continue to boast in oneself as President Trump has done to this very day.
         Franklin Graham said that Donald Trump won the election by "the hand of God." This is indisputable but it says nothing about God's plan for America! The Financial Times of London published a piece with the title...'How The Bible Belt Lost God And Found Trump.' In it they wondered how American Christianity could become so enamored with a gambling casino magnate. Under Obama we were a remnant...but we ran to 'Egypt'....we ran to Donald Trump for protection. It's one thing to recognize that he was the only choice in the election, which he was, but altogether another thing to put our faith, hope and allegiance in a man.
       Christian journalist Cal Thomas interviewed candidate Trump and asked him who Jesus was. When Trump avoided giving an answer Thomas pressed him..."who do you say Jesus is." Here was Trump's answer..."Jesus to me is somebody I can think about for security and confidence. Somebody I can revere in terms of bravery and courage and, because I consider the Christian religion so important, somebody I can totally rely on in my own mind"
        Mr. Trump said during the campaign that he wasn't sure that he ever asked God for forgiveness. He added... "I don't bring God into the picture" CBN asked him...who is God and Mr. Trump's answer was..." God is the ultimate...so nobody, no there's nothing like God." His new administration requested that there be no sermon at the inauguration service...only prayers...and he gave more attention to the LGBT community in his inauguration speech than he did to the benefactor and sustainer of this nation since its beginnings. So Mr. Vice President...just when did this transformation take place?
   

The Promise...The Film

         My wife and I had a private screening of the film The Promise this afternoon. Well...actually there just wasn't anyone else in the theater but technically it was a private screening.......I got that kind of thinking from Donald Trump.....or Emperor God as Ann Coulter now calls him....actually President Trump tried to strong arm us into passing the original scam Obamacare repeal bill....but technically he got a new bill passed so he's taking credit for it....and trying to buffalo us as to it being a great bill in the process.
         The Promise is one of those films that when it's over you just sit for ten minutes as the credits pass by your glazed-over eyes. Glazed over because of the horrid stark reality of history that you just watched portrayed on film. The Ottoman government systematically caused the death of possibly 1.5 million Armenians during World War I in the final years of the Ottoman Empire.... women... . children....babies.... it didn't matter. This isn't a film review other than to say...it was very good... it was powerful....you should go see it!
         The cinematic panoramas were majestic on the wide screen. The portrayal of the Turkish people was fair in that not all hated as the government did. Christian Bale and a few lesser knowns starred in the film.....which was really a history lessen....a needed history lessen as to what many people may face in the near future in many places around this globe if not the entire globe in a world run amok where powerful influences continue to scheme for a new world order...in technology running amok where the machine is not only becoming a weapon used against the common man but a threat even to its creators...and in religion where Christians are not only being persecuted but increasingly opposed by the multitudes, even in this once God-fearing America, who claim to be Christian while denying the tenets thereof, and therefore the message of salvation itself.

Matthew 24:24-25 (Jesus speaking)...."False messiahs and false prophets will arise and perform great signs and wonders to lead astray, if possible, even the elect. Take note: I have told you in advance."

Rover....We Have To Talk

          It's funny and it's rather amazing. Two radios are on...from the breakfast room is country music and from the dining room where I'm at comes conservative talk radio....traffic sounds are discernible from both the front and rear of the house......and there are various sounds of papers rustling....glasses jingling.....footsteps.....conversation.....the furnace coming on and off....yet....yet....and I witnessed it again a few moments ago....amidst this cacophony of many and varied decibels.....some pleasant-some not......if one piece of food hard enough to send off the most minute sound waves is dropped into the dog's dish.....his ears pick up.....he's off the chair he shouldn't be on to begin with....and he's making a beeline into the kitchen.
         That may be a clue as to why when I have an intellectual conversation with him...albeit a short one....he doesn't seem to have any more understanding of what I'm saying than many of the readers of these posts understand it when I say that God's judgment upon America is imminent. So when I sit down with him, look him in the eye, and in very clear diction say...."Rover...listen carefully...if you would try your best to perform all bodily functions while in our own yard, then you probably would get a lot more walks" I really don't think that he understands.
          Jesus said that his sheep hear His voice.....they recognize it.....but in that hearing is also comprehension. We know that the One speaking is true and faithful! Yes we may interpret His Word slightly different at times but the gospel which Paul preached to his listeners has remained the same for almost two millennia....and so are the warnings to remain vigilant and look for His appearing.... this to those who hear His voice and follow Him.